Tag: male nude

Misattributed source; proper attribution sought (The furthest I can trace it is TinEye’s entry–dated January 11, 2011 on a now defunct Tumblr.)

Sometime before the October Revolution, filmmaker Lem Kuleshov made a short film. The film consisted of the same shot of Ivan Mousjoukine wearing a blank look interspersed with footage of a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin and a woman splayed on a couch.

Despite there being no difference in the footage of Mousjoukine, the audience was extremely impressed with the depth of his craft–feeling that he was hungry when he saw the soup, grief stricken upon seeing the dead child and highly desirous of the reclining woman.

Today, film studies peeps refer to this projection of the audiences feelings in response to an image onto an actor/surrogate as the Kuleshov Effect.

(I argue this interpretation stops short: that which precedes informs with regard to the nature of the seeing, what follows contextualizes what has preceded.)

In other words: my experiences/prejudices not only color but dictate to a great extent what I see.

For example: one person may read the above as a trite riff on fashion photography voyeurism, giving the finger to prevailing tendencies for female-bodied folk to be openly arranged and displayed.

Someone else could claim it has D/s overtones.

Still another might be triggered due to similarities between the depiction and memories of past abuse.

What I see ties into the emerging trend of referring to physical intimacy as ‘sharing’ your body. To the extent that this phrase functions as sharing something neither party can own, I find it conceptually fulfilling. When it comes across as this is my toy and I am only letting you use out of my heart’s boundless kindness, I begin to have problems.

To me, this toes the line from the side I endorse.

What do you see?

nymphoninjas:

nymphoninjas:

“And it will be more like a song, and less like its math

If you pull on my hair and bite me like that.” (Bright Eyes)

I used to submit my self shots, but now I have few reasons for submitting some I took of my partner.. first of all, there aren’t that many male submissions here usually and I don’t like this difference. this is quite generic view only. most personal is that I enjoy watching my partner playing with himself and it really turns me on. this time I took some pictures of the action..

It was a great Saturday afternoon and we had sex straight after this little shoot and few times later. different places, different intensity but all these were a real pleasure.

Absolutely gorgeous photo, I like everything about it from his sweet purple pants to her knees in the corner. Glad to hear you two are showing off for each other and documenting it, watching your partner get themselves off is pretty much the best way to learn about what they like and how to get them off. Sounds like you two had an amazing day, I’m quite jealous. I hope you two come back to share with us again, thanks again great job A+. 

This and Knitphilia’s Rape isn’t sexy, but being a survivor is are far-and-a-fucking-way my favorite Nympho Ninjas’ Submission Sunday contributions. (An aside: while I am guardedly supportive of the community surrounding NN it does–as an Asian-American–bother me the way ‘ninja’ is so casually appropriated.)

I don’t think this is an objectively good image. Further, pairing it with Conor Oberst’s self-important ravings borders on intolerable.  But, for all its flaws, it has something many more technically adept work lack: truthfulness–the frayed rag rug, messy hair, kick ass pants, beautiful light on the back of his right hand and knees jutting into the frame.

This is the first time in my life I have actually wished a depiction of male-bodied desire was of me–I almost globally identify with female-bodied depictions of desire. Here, I think it’s due to a mistaken notion that if I looked like this there’d might be a slightly better than impossible odds someone would find me attractive.

Source Unknown

The customary context for depicting ejaculation–i.e. the pornographic money shot–thoroughly pisses me off.

What upsets me is not so much behavior–any goings on between consenting parties are awesome my book–it’s the ubiquity of the presentation.

(Cindy Gallop’s TEDTak outlines the trouble with such ubiquity better than I can.)

Beyond that, the fact that the woman is expected to wait passively, looking up, making eye contact with her lover–getting semen in your eyes is worse than nosing tequila, FYI. If she really wants cum all over her face, why can’t she exercise some agency and lend a hand. 

Bringing me to the other thing–and I can only speak from my own experience here–but the best self-induced orgasm ever is only marginally better than the shabbiest orgasm contributed by a lover. Why drive cross country in a Maserati only to stop and walk the last furlong to the driveway of the destination?

Lastly, the act of ejaculation–when there’s some force behind it, is both really fucking visceral and with the projectile trajectory taking on endlessly fascinating, liquified globular forms, goddamn visually dynamic.

My own failed efforts not withstanding, I am obsessively convinced of the possibility of depicting ejaculation in ‘fine art’ context.

This .gif is equally a failure In terms of artfulness. But from the standpoint of pornography, it’s an interesting a departure.

Not to mention as far as cum shots go, the distance and arc are not only impressive but also quite lovely.

The Frenzy of the Visible – Self-Portrait (2013)

The first thing I notice about this is actually the last thing that registers: these are both close-ups.

I’m not averse to close-ups; they allow for focusing on details that might otherwise be missed and when thoughtfully applied can draw attention to the foreign-in-the-familiar.

However, most close-ups exemplify a knee-jerk, voyeuristic fixation: faces and erogenous zones.

It’s sensible enough tactic–glimpse up-close that which is instinctively watched; but there are at least two flaws:

  1. Contextual diminution imposes a representational metonymy wherein a part of the subject (the face) replaces the whole.
  2. Heaping familiarity on top of familiarity in tandem with physical proximity of the imaging device to the subject fosters a false sense of intimacy.

With something like say: portraiture, these are–at worst–critical peccadilloes. When it comes to imagery preoccupied with explicit content, it’s rather another.

This not only shows something beautiful, it shows its work with regard to why what is being shown is being shown in the way it is. (i.e. in close-up)

To see it: take either image independent of the other. Each is strong image in-and-of-itself; each offers an incontrovertible reading of the scene: a male-bodied individual laying on clean, white sheets, masturbating.

Taken together, the artful foreign-in-the-familiar framing in the separate panels merges to form a close-up than in an acharacteristic manner conceals more than it reveals. (Further emphasized by the matting and the orientation as a diptych.)

Truly a first-rate, fucking crackerjack image.

Source: frenzyofthevisible

Sam Scott Schiavo – excerpts from La Solitudine (2013)

This post presents the images as a triptych whereas on Schiavo’s website it’s a five panel progression.

I am not sure how to process it. None of the images considered individually are especially strong.

However, re-constructed as a triptych, the separate images form a cohesive whole: water droplets and reflections in the glass separating the subject from the camera diminish as the eye moves downward; the elbow’s reiteration strangely enforces as continuity between the top and center frame, easing transition.

Whereas, the discontinuity between the absence of the hand and arm in the center frame eases what would other be an especially jarring re-framing.

I dig the the images as a triptych. The difficulty I have is the individual images aren’t strong enough to stand on their own. And to me that’s one of the prerequisites of the polyptych form. Granted I am not well-versed in the formal conventions beyond altarpieces, Van Eych and Bosch.

Familiarity with the form is certainly important but there is something disingenuous about cramming a work into a form as a remedy for one-dimensional conceptualization and lackluster execution.

And that is a shame because in the age of iPhone panoramas and automated photostitch programs there are a few image makers who are creating fascinating polyptych’s. The ones that jump immediately to mind are: David Hilliard, Accra Shepp & Tom Spianti.

Source: samscottschiavo.com

Source Unknown (Initial poster Scott Loves Cock, maybe?)

My reading of this runs pretty much like this: these two fellows are hanging out and one says: would you mind licking my balls while I masturbate.

I’m not going to lie: a world where desire was addressed in a similar fashion as admitting you’re hungry and inquiring if someone else is also. (By extension, the other person could not be hungry and it wouldn’t be a big deal that one party was and the other wasn’t.)

As fabulous as it all sounds–it’s a pipe dream for hundreds of reasons I can’t possibly get into here.

Here’s the knotty rub (pun maybe a little intended): part of the reason I see this image in the way I do is that I tend to perceive ‘gay’ porn as a cut above porn targeting straight men.

‘Gay’ pornography constitutes a fraction of my lifetime smut consumption, in truth. Whereas, I am familiar with the conventions of ‘straight’ porn: bronzed and muscle-bound male-bodied performer encounters buxom female-bodied performer in a perfectly mundane situation that might happen to anyone, things rapidly and unrealistically escalate and so begins ticking off check boxes on the list of things porn through nothing more than rote force of blind habit has convinced us ‘straight’ folks get off on seeing.

Not to even get into the issues surrounding privilege, objectification, exclusion, etc. & etc.

But as I am largely unfamiliar and therefore oblivious to comparable tropes in ‘gay’ porn, my impression is that ‘gay’ porn is more enjoyable for those who perform in it that is ‘straight’ porn.

It’s a well-intentioned enough view. However, at best it’s essentialist, at worst slut-shaming by proxy–the assumption being that because of the pervasive sexism in the porn, there is no way a woman can derive pleasure from her participation. (I am going to work on this, going forward.)

Finally, my reading presumes from a place of fundamental unknowing that there are no comparable politics of oppression acting in ‘gay’ porn. Just because I am unfamiliar with them doesn’t mean they do not exist. (I’m sure they do, in fact; history shows that as soon as something is commodified, means of exploiting the commodification for material gain come out of the fucking wood work.

Source: scottlovescock

Yann Faucher – Untitled (2012)

Frustrating and illogical composition aside, there is so much to love here: suffused summer light bleeding from the window like a wound, suffusing the fringe of a beautiful body and clotting—white and diaphanous—on curtain gauze; eyes closed lightly, mouth open just a little; long arms dangle, finger tips tracing the textured braille of the bed sheets; above his right knee, and the forgotten change left on the sill that will stick for a moment when he stands again.

The content of the work is stunning, trading in sincere portraits of primarily nude male-bodied models. When [gender neutral pronoun] does make images of female-bodied individuals, the result is a sort of Fassbinder-ian waiting for those quiet moments wherein women are no longer divided into a me & the-me-the-world-sees and are finally alone with their thoughts.

It kills me to say it but all this potential is greatly diminished by Faucher’s thoughtless reliance on #skinnyframebullshit. I don’t know what it is more insufferable or sloppy.

There needs to be a reason, a compositional logic behind a vertical frame. I don’t know if in making portraits Faucher considers portrait orientation more fitting—though [insert gender neutral possessive] grasp of the technical seems more nuanced than that. It might also be an effort to comment on the way audiences view images (what with smartphones leading the #skinnyframebullshit charge). If that was the case, I could accept it. (I am not against vertical frames; I am against using them without any good reason.)

I admit that I haven’t looked closely at the rest of Faucher’s images; but the sense driving the framing seems to be the grievously mistaken notion that the frame should echo the length of the window. Only, due to the camera’s pan and the lenses wide angle of view, the visible portion of the window is closer to a square than a rectangle.

The window bay’s leftmost vertical angle does not align with the left frame edge. A small point, yes; nonetheless one that would have been de-emphasized with landscape orientation.

In this case the oddity of the angle indicates other glaring inconsistencies: the boy’s body is not balanced within the frame– the top of his left knee is lopped off by the right frame edge, his left foot hacked through the ankle and heel by the bottom frame edge. Then there’s the dead space directly above his head…

Don’t get me wrong the work is good; but it also has the potential to be so fucking much better. Unrealized potential pisses me off. (However, I suspect this says more about me than Faucher.)

Source: Flickr / ii1

Source Unknown

The psychedelic background reminds me of some of the stuff Ryan McGinley has shot in caves. The pose would seem to even further suggest him, except that he’d shoot in a studio with more even lighting and acknowledgement of the camera.

Were I to see this image in a magazine, I probably wouldn’t give it pause. But the way it is presented here–on what appears to be a cheap bathmat, suggesting an implicit POV shot–contributes a luridness in which I am always inclined to revel.

Source: colabottlebaby

kindnessinyoureyes:

Adam
London, June 2013

This is a thoughtful way to present a male-bodied nude: soles of both feet exposed, clenched ass, the arching line of the spine and the his right arm covers his face; except for the heavily dangling scrotum and cut definition of trapezius and deltoid musculature, it is an androgynous-to-effeminate depiction– explicit, vulnerable and mysterious.

It reminds me of one of my favorite images from last year. (That post is worth re-reading as it covers ground I’ll be skipping this time around.)

Comparing these two images does Leonidas’ work a disservice. And although I will give him credit for shooting film (Fuji’s Superia color negative, in this case), most of the faults are a result of sloppy craft.

This is the most egregious example of #skinnyframebullshit, I’ve posted. Whereas most people deploy portrait orientation to the end of reifying the verticality of the composition–lame at best as far as justification goes, lazy at worst–the subject here is not vertical.

You can feeling it just looking at the image but to see it visualize the center vertical as a fulcrum balancing the rear leg of the chair (frame left) and the top of the boy’s head (frame right). Notice the rightward thrust. Add this to the light pooling in overexposed puddles on the floor and back wall, the lack of space between the chair and wall and the flow of the composition is decidedly right leaning. The angle of the shot is an effort to use the line where the floor meets the wall as a means of adding dimensionality but this only exacerbates the existing problems with the slant.

Landscape orientation would have made a much more dynamic composition. And while this lacks the audacity of the image of which it reminds me, it might have done a better job standing on its own.

Criticisms notwithstanding, the scarcity of images depicting male-bodied persons in a simultaneously ‘formal’ and sexually charged imagery is such a rarity, that efforts, however flawed, deserve acknowledgement.

Source: kindnessinyoureyes

Ryan McGinley – Somewhere Place (2011)

This is easily my favorite McGinley creation–followed closely by Pickup Truck, 2013, Untitled (Bathtub), 2005,  Running Field, 2007, Dakota (Hair), 2004 + Ann (Windy Truck), 2007.

As for the rest of it? I’m conflicted.

What attracts me to the work–its restless + vital physicality as well as the way the images I like thrum with a dreamlike unbounded anarchic togetherness–stems directly from party line criticism: the fuel of charmed youth, the match of absented consequences.

Plus, the work is goddamn pretty as you please; and when you tall that with it’s unmediated immediacy–so rarely seen in galleries–and it’s cleary how + why McGinley became the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney.

What, to me, is off putting is the artist’s reliance on goosing the viewer’s reptile brain. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that McGinley is conceptually vacuous–but his work lacks anything even remotely resembling the conceptual sophistication of his predecessors (i.e. Nan Goldin + Larry Clark).

In the same breath, though, I can’t think of another imagemaker who so fairly divides his focus between male bodied and female bodied subjects. And that’s not nothing. Especially, given his impressive ability to unify contrived naturalism with an ultimately hollow aesthetics that still has the capacity to resonate deeply with the viewer.

Source: ryanmcginley.com